Mercedes DiFavian's Background - Beginning pt.1
A warm nuzzle... That was my first memory...
I awoke to my mother nuzzling my belly, rolling me side to side over and over... trying to inspire my first breaths to ease into my small tan and crème colored form. I sneezed... and rolled away from the reach of her cold nose... but Oh! The ground around me was even colder... Being born in a small den in the Icelandic-Slovenian Glaciers has its downsides, and the ever-present cold was one of them. My mother looked down at me. Something in her whine gave me the feeling that something was amiss, and I felt the ground reverberate as she padded away from me and towards my smaller siblings. I rolled over as best I could, and stood on four shaky legs before toppling over. I had an insane case of vertigo, and couldn't differentiate down from up. The sound of my siblings hungrily yipping and scrambling over my mother gave me a newfound sense of direction, and I attempted to head that way...but I soon found myself falling over again.
6 weeks later, I found myself to be a large kit... My mother was a small White Arctic fox... though she was more of a crème' color as my siblings put it, and my father was a large Arctic Wolf... smoky gray with brutal black eyes. I knew better than to be around him... My mother was sympathetic to my case, but my father didn't want to hear of it...
"This whelp is the biggest of the litter!! She should be the one the others depend on, not the other way around!" He would sternly chide my mother, as though she had some sort of control over what kind of kits they'd have. "Instead, this... RAT... eats up the good food with no possible way of earning her keep. How is she to be a proper wolf if she doesn't even know what a wolf looks like?!" My mother would beg and plead with him for what seemed to be hours on end, me having to hide in a niche in the cave wall, until my father blew off enough steam to snap at her a final time before storming out... always making the same comment...
"What good is a wolf with no eyes?"
But I did have eyes... Two very special eyes... ... Almost see-through clear, my eyes couldn't see visible light, but I saw things that the others didn't... The others couldn't see movement with their eyes closed... nor could they see the difference between living matter and nonliving matter color-coded in front of them. True, I could not see light or color... but I saw... I SAW...
My mother would normally walk over to my hiding spot after one of these "disagreements", as she called them, and talk me out of hiding... informing me sweetly that he was gone... But I already knew this... the reddish haze that signified life, or rather, my father, had disappeared from my view behind the gray-blue haze of the den walls as he ran off... She would try and console me, though I wasn't crying or upset... I believe that by her trying to console me, telling me how things would be alright, and that I would be fine... she was really trying to console, and convince herself of the very same. "Plus," she added one night, "What your father fails to realize is that you aren't just a wolf... You are fox too; and foxes are very clever... I just know that eventually, you'll figure out a way to see and speak just as well as your sisters and brothers, however you can." Her head then drooped, as did her voice as she finished hat sentence... and she walked slowly away to pull apart my tussling siblings.
One day a few months later, while my siblings and I were out playing in the snow banks, a strange new haze grew before my eyes... Among the vast whiteness, the blue-gray of the sparse foliage, and the small reddish haze of my siblings, I saw a large Orange-red haze move closer to my family... This creature was several times larger than my father, though it smelled not like any forest creature I had encountered previously... I let out a sharp chirp, alerting my mother of the intruder, and like a flash, she burst out of the den. She quickly ushered us into the den, carrying my smallest sister on her maw, while the creature quickly stumbled towards us. Its previous attempts to mask the sounds of its footsteps were all but eradicated as it hurriedly crunched through the snow towards my sibling and me. I followed my brothers' hazes in hot pursuit, until I saw one of my brothers trip and fall, a small yipe escaping his muzzle as he tumbled forwards. My mother hurriedly gathered the rest of my siblings into the den, and stood by the entrance, Hackles raised as she growled with contempt at the creature... I stopped and looked back at my brother's haze, as the larger creature bent over and reached for him. He scrambled up trying to run away, but not before it got one large meaty paw around my brother's midsection. My mother growled further, snapping, issuing threats as she watched in horror as the creature stood up with my brother. My father suddenly jumped up out from behind the pines, a carnal growl emanating from his chest, ears flattened as he circled around the creature... It seemed to recognize its predicament, as it grabbed the small blue haze on its side and pointed it at my father... He stood his ground, snarling and snapping at the intruder, but he moved no closer... the creature backed away slowly, my mother whining protests, and my father uttering feral curses, and I standing there like the stubborn pup that I was. The thing turned into the pine grove to leave with my brother, and without thinking, I charged for it, aiming at the dark red haze on what seemed to be its left leg. I hit true to my aim, and as my small needle-sharp teeth clamped around and through the thick animal pelts boots, I heard and felt the creature roar out in pain and anger... I had found a hidden injury! As it flailed its leg about, I stayed clamped on, and this distracted the creature long enough to give my father the right amount of time to leap at the creature. Its large hang swung open, throwing my brother to the side, as the blue haze fell from its side and sank into the snow... My father and the creature wrestled about for quite awhile, him ripping at the things neck and appendages, and it hammering at my father as it tried to break free of his steely grip. Eventually, the creature found the blue haze, grabbed it and pointed it at my father... The noise was deafening. The "Crack!" resonated throughout the trees, and my father yelped as he found his right shoulder deeply grazed by the bullet. He went in for the kill, and within a few moments, the creature had stopped twitching... By this time, I was at my brothers' side, nuzzling him, trying to salvage what bit of his life I could into his limp body, but to no avail. My mother's howls of sorrow cut into me deeply, as I whimpered besides my lifeless brother's body, watching as his haze turned from a soft red to a light grey, from the centre outward...
The next week, my father took me hunting with him... alone. At first I was worried for my life... Perhaps he blamed me for my brother's death, and his physical injury... As we staked out and caught a few tender snow hares, it became clear to me that he actually needed my assistance with the hunt. His shoulder wound was healing slowly, and the cold air wasn't making things better... it made his gait odd, and running a difficulty, but I could chase after the hares with quite a bit of speed, and I could see where they went in their burrow... even through the dirt, thus trapping them easily when they resurfaced. Walking home with 5 large hares, my father told me something I'd never before heard said to me... "Good job. You did very well today" For me, this was as close to "I love you" as I was ever going to get... as close as I ever DID get... for the next month, my father passed. His shoulder wound contracted gangrene from the cold, and poisoned his blood... killing him slowly...
Time went on, and my siblings and I grew to become several young adult Arctic Wolfox kits. Each of us, in turn, went our different ways... setting off to start families of our own... and soon I too set off to find my own den... As a large Wolfox of little over a year and 3 months, I found little difficulty scoping out a nice piece of territory. However, this territory soon was found to have its flaws. The land was too easily given up to be of great importance, as I learned when I found out that there was only a small section of the ravine available, and very little plant growth... my diet sustained primarily of meat for the next 4 months, and as time went by, I found myself gradually getting thinner... there wasn't nearly enough game to keep me well fed... and I soon found out why. A large laboratory bordered the western edge of my territory line, and they took hold of a lot of animals for....... animal testing...
I was out hunting again, 2 years and 1 month old, and I found a fat snow hare trapped to a bush... It wasn't attached to the bush with twine, like the animals normally seen as bait for traps, and there were no bells or any sort of signal... I sniffed around just to be certain, and only when partially convinced of no foul play, did I go in for the kill. The rabbit attempted to bound off as I lunged towards it, and all too late did I now see that the rabbit was indeed trapped by twine... on its tail! I had been tricked! As I landed aside the rabbit, scrambling to undo my mistake and leap back to safety, a large metal net sprang up and shut around me... A few moments later, I smelled an old, familiar smell, and no sooner did my blood boil than I saw another orange haze come into my view. This one wasn't as large, but as it reached down and grasped my enclosure, I felt fear grab my heart as I sensed it taking me towards... The laboratory...
Mercedes DiFavian copyright Mercedes DiFavian
Update:
As per a request, here is a link to Mercedes' Original coloring...